A Winter Haunting Page 7

  What the hell was that all about? wondered Dale. If it was a real memory, it was one that he had forgotten for more than forty years.

  Sheriff Congden stepped closer, looked at the Land Cruiser’s deflated tires, and said, “What the hell happened here?” It was the same bully’s voice, thickened by decades of cigarettes and power, but the same voice.

  Dale had to clear his throat before speaking. He told Congden about the skinheads, all the while praying that Congden wouldn’t recognize him. Do bullies remember their prey?

  “Yeah, I know ’em,” said the sheriff, squinting at Dale through sunglasses. He was talking about the skinheads. “But do I know you?” said Congden.

  Dale shook his head, afraid to speak, afraid that C.J. would remember his voice.

  The sheriff walked around the rear of the Land Cruiser and squinted at the license plates. “Montana. You just passin’ through, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Miller,” said Dale and immediately realized that if and when Congden asked to see his license, he’d be in trouble—certainly more trouble than the local skinhead punks. “Tom Miller,” said Dale. “Yeah, I’m just driving through on my way to Cincinnati.”

  Congden squinted at him and rested his thumbs in his gun belt. Leather creaked. The sheriff’s gray shirt was dirty and straining at the belly.

  If he asks me for my license and registration, I’ll say that I forgot them, thought Dale in a panic and realized at once that this would not work. He’d just end up in the county jail while they traced the registration. He shook his head. What the hell am I panicked about? I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m the victim here. That was the reasonable point of view, but Dale remembered those mean pig eyes of C.J. Congden’s behind a shotgun aimed at Dale’s head when he was a boy. There was no statute of limitations on bullies and their victims.

  The fat sheriff opened his mouth to speak, but right then the radio in his cruiser squawked and hissed. Congden leaned into the open door, listened a minute, said something into his radio, and hung it up.

  Congden straightened up, rested his hands on his gun belt again, and turned back to Dale. “You want to ride back to Oak Hill with me? We gotta get some paperwork done if you’re going to swear out a complaint.”

  I’d rather have a colonoscopy with a Roto-Rooter, thought Dale. He shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him. “I’ll ride back in the tow truck. I need to get some junk out of the Land Cruiser.”

  Congden squinted at him again as if trying to remember where they’d met. Finally he shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just make sure that you stop by the sheriff’s office.”

  Dale nodded and watched the former bully wheeze his way back to his sheriff’s car, get in, and drive off.

  The tow truck arrived less than a minute after Congden’s sheriff’s car disappeared. The two mechanics, Billy and Tuck, were efficient in getting the Cruiser slung into its towing cradle. “We could change the one tire here for you,” said Billy, the older of the two brothers. “Wouldn’t do no good, though. I don’t think anybody in Oak Hill’s got any of these tires in stock. Probably have to bring one in from Peoria or Galesburg. Tomorrow afternoon maybe.”

  Dale nodded. “Is there a place to rent a car in Oak Hill?”

  The brothers shook their heads. Then Turk said, “Wait a minute. Mr. Jurgen over at the Happy Lanes rents out his dead wife’s car sometimes.”

  “That’ll do,” said Dale.

  Dale did not get out of Oak Hill until after 7:00 P.M. The tires would be delivered the next day and he could pick up the Cruiser the next afternoon. He ate dinner at the counter of a five-and-dime on the city square—not a Woolworth’s, they had all disappeared from America years before—and Mr. Jurgen brought his late wife’s blue Buick by from the bowling alley. The Buick was older than most people Dale knew, it reaked of cigarette smoke, and it cost Dale more to rent than it would have to rent a luxury car from Hertz and he had to leave $300 for a damage deposit, but he was glad to pay and get out of Oak Hill before C.J. Congden thought to come looking for him.

  It started to snow again during his drive back to Duane’s farmhouse. Dale was sleepy as he turned down the long lane and drove past the dead trees, snow dancing in his headlights, but he woke up quickly and slammed on the brakes a hundred yards from the farmhouse.

  Dale had not left any lights on when he had driven off to buy groceries earlier in the day. The downstairs was dark.

  But there was a light burning on the second floor.

  EIGHT

  * * *

  DALE sat in the reeking Buick, looked at the light glowing in the second-floor upper left window, listened to pellets of sleet bouncing off the windshield, and thought, Fuck this.

  He backed the rattling old car down the long lane, pulled out onto County 6, and headed back south. Dale had seen enough scary movies in his life. He knew that his role now was to go into the dark farmhouse by himself, call, “Is somebody there?,” go fearfully up the stairs, and then get cut down by the waiting ax murderer. Either that or Realtor Sandy Whittaker had let herself in with her key, cut through the layers of plastic at the top of the stairs, and even at that moment was waiting for him, naked, on one of the beds up there.

  Fuck that, too.

  Dale drove up the second hill and paused at the stop sign at Jubilee College Road. He wasn’t sure where to head next.

  Montana, came his answer.

  He shook his head. Besides a natural reluctance to abandon his $50,000 Land Cruiser in swap for this cigarette-stinking old Buick, he had nowhere to go in Montana. The ranch was rented out. Missoula was hostile territory for him these days. He had no job this year at the university there.

  Oak Hill?

  That made sense, since his truck was there and would be ready the next afternoon. But Dale could not remember if Oak Hill even had a motel—and if it did, it was a primitive one.

  He crossed Jubilee College Road, took the narrow cutoff road through frozen fields to 150A, kept going straight, and turned east onto an empty I-74. Twenty-five minutes later he was in Peoria. Exiting onto War Memorial Drive, he found a Comfort Suites, paid with his American Express, asked the counter guy for a toothbrush, and went up to his room. It smelled of carpet cleaner and other chemicals. The king-size bed was almost obscene in its immensity. A card on top of the TV offered him recent-release movies, including softcore dirty movies.

  Dale sighed, went back out to the rented Buick, and grabbed the sack of groceries that held fruit drinks and some snacks. He rooted around in another bag, found the new tube of toothpaste, and tossed it into the bag. That left only another $230 worth of groceries in sacks covering the back seat, the rear floor, and the front seat of the car. He carried the bag back up to his room, kicked off his boots and sweater, and munched Fig Newtons and sipped orange juice while watching CNN. After a while, he turned off the TV, went in the bathroom and brushed his teeth.

  Eventually he went to sleep.

  * * *

  Dale awoke with the kind of absolute, heart-pounding, bottom-dropping-out-of-everything sense of desperation that comes most solidly between 3:00 and 4:00 A.M. He looked at the motel alarm clock. 3:26 A.M.

  He sat up in bed, turned on the light, and ran his hands over his face. His hands were shaking.

  He didn’t think that it had been a nightmare that had brought him swimming up out of a troubled sleep. It was simply a sense that the world was ending. No, he realized, that wasn’t quite right. It was simply the conviction that the world had already ended.

  The clickover of the century and millennium had been problematic for Dale. Of course, his life had turned to shit about that time and he’d tried to kill himself, but even more troubling than that had been his deep and silent conviction that everything of value to him had been left behind in the old century. Tonight that conviction was totally pervasive and endlessly empty.

  Christ, thought Dale, I left my Prozac, flurazepam, and doxepin at Duane’s farmhouse. He had to smile at the thought. An old short
circuit brings a light on in the second floor of a farmhouse and Professor Dale Stewart blows his brains out for lack of meds. Difficult, he thought. I left the Savage over-and-under at the farmhouse, too.

  Dale glanced at the phone. He could call Dr. Hall. It was earlier in Montana—only about 2:30 A.M. Psychiatrists must be used to that crap.

  What would I tell him? Well, the black dog was back. That had been Dale’s term of choice for deep depression, borrowed from Winston Churchill, who had been plagued by his own Black Dog for decades. Churchill had saved his life by taking up oil painting.

  Why is the black dog back? Dale went into the bathroom, ran some tap water into one of the little plastic glasses—sanitarily wrapped for his protection—and came back and sat on the small couch and thought about it.

  I don’t like running away from here. From Duane’s place. Why not? Duane’s farm and Elm Haven and Oak Hill and C.J. Congden and even Michelle Staffney were depressing enough in their own right. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to leave now?

  No. Missoula and the ranch were out of bounds for him now. He knew that. If he returned, it was probable that he would finish what he started on November 4 a year earlier.

  But why Duane’s drafty old place? Why Elm Haven? Because he had old connections there. Because the place had changed—for the worse—but so had he, and perhaps it was necessary for him to find that connection to his childhood, to something good about himself, to Duane, to the reason he became a writer and a teacher.

  And there’s the book. This is the only place I can write it. For the first time, he consciously acknowledged that he was going to spend his sabbatical year writing a novel about Duane, about Elm Haven, about 1960, about the summer he had so much trouble remembering, and, ultimately, about himself.

  Vanity, vanity, vanity. He knew better. It would take great humility to write this novel: humility, not the professorial, historical, commercial, and auctorial cleverness that went into his Jim Bridger mountain man books. This novel would be just for him. And he would need both Duane’s notebooks and a connection with Duane’s life to write it.

  The heater hummed on. A big truck roared up through its endless gears out on War Memorial Drive. Dale turned the light out and went back to sleep, even without his Prozac and flurazepam and doxepin.

  Stewart! Dale . . . Stewart!”

  Dale paused just outside the garage where the mechanics were finishing mounting the Land Cruiser’s wheels with his two new tires. He looked over his shoulder, but he had recognized the voice.

  Sheriff C.J. Congden was strolling across the oily concrete driveway toward him. Congden had one hand on the revolver in his holster. He was wheezing slightly as he came. Dale waited.

  “Miller, huh?” said Congden. “Tom Miller. Yeah, cute. Well, I knew I’d seen your ugly-ass face before.”

  “Do you want something, Sheriff?” Unlike the day before, Dale’s pulse did not race. He felt completely calm.

  “Why’d you lie to me, Stewart?” snapped Congden. “I ought to fucking arrest you.”

  “For not telling you my real name?” said Dale and smiled.

  “For misrepresenting yourself to a peace officer,” wheezed Congden. His fat fingers continued tapping at the grip of his revolver. Leather creaked.

  Dale shrugged and waited.

  Congden squinted at him. “I remember you, Stewart. You and that fucking bunch of weasel friends of yours.”

  “Watch your language, Sheriff,” said Dale. “You’re a public servant now, not the town bully. Get nasty with me and I’ll swear out a complaint.”

  “Fuck your complaint,” growled Congden, but he looked around the garage to see who was listening. The brrrpp-brrrppp of the air wrench putting on the Land Cruiser’s lug nuts sufficiently covered the conversation. “And fuck you, Stewart.”

  “You have a nice day, too, Sheriff,” said Dale and turned back to watch them lower his truck on the lift.

  Congden walked toward the open garage door and then paused. “I know where you’re staying.”

  Dale was sure that he did. It was a small county.

  Congden walked away and Dale called after him, “Hey, Sheriff—any luck finding those punks who just cost me more than three hundred dollars?”

  C.J. Congden did not look back.

  The beautiful morning had shamed Dale. The snow had turned into sleet during the night, the sleet into rain, but the morning dawned sunny and warmer and sweet-smelling. Dale went out to breakfast at a pancake house across the parking lot from the Comfort Suites. The food was good, the coffee was good, and the waitress was friendly. Dale read the morning Peoria Journal Star and felt better than he had in weeks.

  War Memorial Drive became Highway 150 outside of Peoria, and Dale drove the Buick the back way to Elm Haven, leaving the window open to air the cigarette smell out of the car. He was surprised to note that half of the trees still had their leaves and that those leaves still held deep fall colors. It was a beautiful day.

  Just at the edge of Peoria’s western limits—about ten miles beyond the city he’d known as a boy in Elm Haven—there was a plaza with a hardware and a sports store. Dale visited both and came out with a thirty-six-inch crowbar and a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He tossed both in the trunk of the Buick and drove on to Duane’s farmhouse.

  The fields on either side of the approach lane were wet and sweet-smelling. Dale stopped the Buick in front of the house, but there was no way he could tell if the upstairs light was on in all that blazing daylight. He pulled to the side, parked the Buick, retrieved the baseball bat from the trunk, and walked up to the side door.

  It was locked, just as he’d left it. Dale let himself in and stood in the kitchen a moment.

  “Hello?” He heard the slightest echo of his own voice and had to smile. He’d be damned if he’d yell “Is anyone there?” just before the supernatural killer in the hockey mask jumped out to cut him down.

  He searched the first floor. Everything seemed to be as he’d left it. He went down into the basement. No hockey-mask killers there. He remembered that he’d stored his Savage over-and-under down here in two pieces, but after checking that the pieces were where he’d put them, he decided not to add it to his Louisville Slugger arsenal. Besides, he’d thrown away the only shotgun shell.

  Dale went up the stairs.

  The layers of yellowing plastic were intact. Dale checked the nails and staples around the wood frame, but they had not been pulled out or replaced. The frame itself had been nailed into the door frame at the head of the stairs—decades ago. Dale pushed against the plastic, but it yielded only slightly, crackling a bit. If someone had visited the upstairs, they’d not come this way.

  Not if they’re human.

  Dale had deliberately phrased that thought to amuse himself, but in the darkness of the stairway, it didn’t seem that funny. He leaned closer to peer through the heavy plastic. The vague outlines of a hallway and a table. Sunlight through thick curtains. Nothing moved.

  Dale pulled out his multi-use knife and set the longest blade against the plastic. He hesitated a second and then folded the blade back and set the knife back in his pocket. He laid the baseball bat against the yellowed plastic and tapped it lightly. Let sleeping dogs lie.

  As if on cue, there came the scrabble of claws against the linoleum downstairs.

  Dale whirled, bat raised, just in time to see a very small black dog run from the parlor hall into the kitchen.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Dale, his heart pounding.

  He clattered down the stairs and ran into the kitchen just in time to see the outer screen bang shut. He’d left the inner door open and the little dog had been able to push the screen door out.

  Dale ran outside and stood on the stoop, bat ready. He half expected the small black dog to be out of sight—a delusion—but there it went, running hellbent-for-leather toward the outbuildings behind the farm, its little black ass wiggling as it ran.

  Dale almost laughed. He’d been ready fo
r the undead killer in the hockey mask and instead he’d found a lap dog. Whatever the little thing was, it was definitely a dog and definitely a shrimp—terrier-sized, but short-haired. All black except for a glimpse of pale or pink on its muzzle. Short ears.

  “Hey, dog!” yelled Dale and whistled.

  The little black dog did not slow down. It disappeared through a hole in the first outbuilding—the one Dale remembered Duane calling the chicken coop.

  If the dog was in the house, why didn’t I find it when I searched? Dale shook his head but walked out to the chicken coop.

  The shed was a mess. The door had been wired shut—Dale had to unwrap a yard of rusted wire—but one side of the structure had rotted away between the wood and the foundation until the hole was large enough for that dog to slip through. But it was a runt of a dog.

  Dale propped the door open and looked in the coop. “Jesus Christ,” he said again, softly this time. He took the gold Dunhill lighter out of his pocket and flicked it on, holding the lighter high. There was just enough light to see by, but not enough to show detail. He walked back to the farmhouse and returned with a flashlight.

  The interior of the coop had a fossilized layer of chicken manure mixed with embedded white feathers. The roosts were empty and the straw was ancient. The boards, walls, and floor were covered with dried blood, aged to a deep brown patina. There was no sign of the dog.

  “What the hell happened in here?” Dale said aloud, but he knew the answer. Fox. Fox in the henhouse. Or a dog. He had to smile again. Not this dog. It was too small. Hell, a chicken could have beaten up this little black dog.

  Dale looked in all of the roosts and niches, but no black dog. On the west wall, however, there were more slats missing. The pooch had probably run right through the chicken coop.

  Dale went out into the bright sunlight and wonderful autumn air and checked in the mud at the west end of the coop. Sure enough, tiny dog tracks crossed the lot toward another of the handful of small sheds and outbuildings.